Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/34

12 the woman should be well fed, with a full proportion of animal food; perhaps some quantity of good beer; live in good houses; good air; be employed in wholesome and pleasant exercises; and void of care. The children, after they are weaned, should have a sufficiency of well-prepared vegetable and animal food, such as new milk, and broths of fresh meat: for want of these, the state of their bowels is induced, which proves so destructive to our race. With regard to the fevers of children, there are many of them generated by the circumstances of their condition; almost all of them are exasperated by it. It has frequently happened to me, and to all other physicians, that, after being called to a child of a man of fortune, ill of this disease, whom I have found in a large lofty room, well ventilated, clean, and sweet; bed soft, undisturbed by noise, anxiously attended by people relieving each other; furnished with everything the cellars, the kitchen, the garden, the druggist, can furnish; in short, everything the four quarters of the world can supply: after, I say, being with such a patient, we are frequently entreated to visit the child or children of a poor man, in the same illness; several of them generally lying in the same bed; heated by and heating each other, in a small room, corrupted by the exhalations of the whole family; disturbed by one